


could twist the sinews of thy heart

by a_walking_shadow



Series: burning bright [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dr Nyarlathotep, Gen, One-Sided The Doctor/Jack Harkness, One-Sided The Doctor/Martha Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-14 18:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18953242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_walking_shadow/pseuds/a_walking_shadow
Summary: Martha and Jack reflect on life, love, and humanity.





	could twist the sinews of thy heart

He _burns_.

That’s the hard thing about it, really. She wants to hate him for it. She wants to hate the way he tears through her emotions and stands, laughing, in the ashes. She really does.

It would be easier if he was blades tearing her to ribbons. At least, that way, it would be deliberate.

Instead, he’s like a wildfire. He exists to destroy, that’s his _point_. Fire and ice and rage, carelessly shoved into the body of a lanky guy and set loose on the universe like a demented form of pest control, and oh, he says he’s sorry, but he never truly means it.

He never apologises to her. That’s probably good. If he did, then she’d know that he knew that he was hurting her. At least this way, she can convince herself he’s truly as ignorant as he acts. That he’s so focused on setting the skies aflame and watching them burn to notice when the flames catch her, too.

She probably should have said something. Reminded him that humans are fragile and three-dimensional and flammable. Instead, she lets the burns harden into calluses and reaches out again, ready to pick up whatever mess he’s left behind.

 

Martha used to wonder if he could love. Then she’d think no, don’t be silly, clearly, he loved Rose. Listen to the way he talks about her. Then a smaller voice in her mind would say _that’s not love, that’s obsession_ , and she’d tell it to shut up because one undergrad psychology course does not give her the authority to psychoanalyse an alien.

Perhaps more to the point was the question of if he could love _her_.

She brings it up with Jack one day, after the Year, when her family finally stops jumping visibly at every shadow and she feels like she can afford to risk a trip to Cardiff.

They end up down by the waterfront, not far from Jack’s base, and he smells a bit like ozone, nice and clean and nothing like smoke or fire, his timeline torn free from its moorings, and she wonders how she’s even able to comprehend that last bit.

‘He’s a Time Lord’, Jack says, staring over the bay with eyes that have seen a thousand civilizations burn and know there’s only worse to come. ‘The legends were always horrific. Inhuman.’

His coat is the exact opposite of him, with the slight, unmistakable smell of gunpowder and so weighed down in history that she almost wonders if its past could rub off on him. More likely, he’s just trying to cancel out the nothingness and pass himself off as a slightly more normal human. (It’s not working very well.)

Martha shifts slightly, and does not say, ‘They got that much right.’ Jack hears it anyway, and does not laugh bitterly, although she hears that too.

They fall silent again, properly silent, staring out across the bay. The wind is cold, cuts to the bone even through clothing, but neither of them so much as flinch. (He was far, far, colder, and they loved him even when the frostbite curled around their hearts and left them gasping for breath.)

‘Do you think he could love someone like us?’ she asks.

‘Us?’

‘You know, human.’

Jack barks out a laugh like the sizzle of an energy weapon arcing through space, abrupt and startling and gone again with only the memory of it imprinted on your eyelids.

‘You aren’t-’ she pauses, frustrated. ‘You don’t burn like he does. You never could. You’re not angry enough, even though you have full right to be. You’re still too human.’

‘That your official diagnosis, Doctor Jones? I’m human, and unfortunately, it’s terminal?’ He says it with a smile, one that stings.

‘Unfortunately?’

‘Well, won’t do anything for him, will it?’

‘Rose was human.’

‘Yeah. Emphasis on the “was”. Maybe he does just want someone like him.’

‘The Master?’ Martha asks, even though the idea of it leaves a horrible taste in her mouth and she finds herself tugging her jacket even tighter. Jack considers this idea for a moment, then shrugs, the movement rippling through his coat. ‘Didn’t seem that way to me. Obsession, yes, but love?’

She hesitates, thinking of the year-long apocalypse and how the Doctor sat quietly before a tyrant, and of a gunshot which got far more of an emotional reaction than Japan burning. ‘In his case, I don’t know if there’s much of a difference.’

‘Yet another similarity, then’, Jack mutters, bitterly. At her look, he adds, ‘I spent centuries waiting for him. Convinced he was a good man. That he could solve- well, everything. Even though I knew he’d abandoned me.’

 ‘Stop it, Jack. It wasn’t like that. You aren’t like that.’

‘Wasn’t it? I’m the one who lived it. I’m the one who tried to become more like him. Look where it got me.’

‘Sometimes I wonder’, Martha says, and then stops. Jack isn’t the right person to say this to. Conversely, he’s the only one who might understand.

He does, and finishes her sentence for her.

‘You wonder what might have happened if you became more like him. If you let him change you.’

‘Yeah. You, Rose- you’re both so strong. You can keep pace with him, match him, even. What hope did I have?’

‘you stayed human, Martha’, Jack tells her. ‘I think that means you’re the strongest of all of us.’


End file.
